It can send SOAP requests to a given time and attendance device to perform several types of operations like getting and setting the time, getting the attendance logs, getting information about users, creating or updating users, uploading or deleting user fingerprints, deleting users or their passwords, get statistics from the device, clearing data from the device, disabling, enabling, restarting or shutting down a device.

The package can also communicate with the device using UDP connections to execute other operations not supported by the SOAP API.

All methods above are implemented by 2 classes: Providers\TADSoap and Providers\TADZKLib.

There are some SOAP functions supported by ZK devices that it's suppossed, according to the official docs (which incidentally it's very limited and so poor!!!) must show an expected behaviour, but when they are invoked don't work like is expected, so they become useless (e.g. Restart SOAP call). For these situations, TAD class implement them by Providers\TADZKLib class ([PHP_ZKLib] - http://dnaextrim.github.io/php_zklib/). This class takes a different approach to "talk to the device": it uses UDP protocol at device standard port 4370.

PHP_ZKLib class it's been fully integrated, after a refactoring process taking out all duplicated code (DRY).

For practical purposes, you don't have to be worried about when to use TAD class or PHP_ZKLib class because you only have to get a TAD instance (as shown below) and call any of its methods available. The class decides about when runs the method invoked using TAD class or PHP_ZKLib class.

Requirements

Supported devices

Getting started

Setting up the environment

After download TAD-PHP, you have 2 ways to get your enviroment configured to use the classes:

Composer

Composer is the PHP's package manager and is the recommended way to get packages for your projects. It's also able to build automatically *autoloaders* if you wrote down your code using PSR-0 and/or PSR-4 standards, avoiding you headaches about everything related to loading classes.

TADPHP is built follows PSR-4 standard and comes with a specific file named composer.json that allows Composer to generate a file named autoload.php (beside others files of course). This files generated is the only one you need to include in your project to get all classes required by TADPHP loaded in memory:

Install Composer:
`
curl -s https://getcomposer.org/installer | php

`

Get inside TADPHP root folder and generate the autoload.php file:
`
php composer.phar dump-autoload
`
The command above will generate a folder called vendor. Inside of it, you'll see the autoload.php

Require/Include autoload.php file in the index.php of your project or whatever file you need to use TAD-PHP classes:
`php
<?php
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
...

`

Loading TAD-PHP classes by hand

Even if Composer it's the preferred method to generate the files needed to get all classes loaded, maybe you want to do the task by hand:

Copy and paste TAD-PHP folder in your project root.

Rename TAD-PHP folder to use a shorter name (for example 'tad').

Require/Include all classes required by TAD-PHP using the relative TAD-PHP path

TAD API

SOAP API is implemented by TADSoap class. All methods that use UDP Protocol are implemented by PHP_ZKLib class. Even though you have 2 classes, you do not have to be worried about which method is been calling using SOAP api or through PHP_ZKLib. You've got a single interface.

Some methods need that you set up some parameters prior you can call them. TAD class uses associative arrays as way to pass params to the methods. Using associative arrays is a "more verbose way" that helps you to remember which params you have to pass.

Creating / Updating users

TAD class allows you to register new users in the device or even you can update (change) information about an user already registered. However to achieve this, TAD class needs to delete the user (of course this applies when you are updating user's information) and then creates the user. Maybe this is not the best way to do that, but if TAD just calls the method to create a user, it will be created as many times as you call it.

If you look into PHP_ZKLib code, you'll see a method to create / update users. However, when you call that method, it generates a PIN code (not PIN2 code) in a way that if that code already exists in the device, it refuses to create the user. This is a method that should be modified to make it working properly but the way how PIN code is created is unknown.

In the meantime, TAD class uses delete and create SOAP calls. Of course, to make things easy for you, you have to call just 1 method.

Note: The way TAD class creates / updates users has one big concern you have to be aware. The user's fingerprints stored (templates) are lost!!!, so it is necessary to save them prior you call set_user_info() method.

Uploading user's fingerprints

The device uses an algorithm to encode fingerprints called "BioBridge" and it has 2 flavors: VX 9.0 and the new one VX 10.0. According the documentation, VX 10.0 generates shorter encoded fingerprints and it's faster when the device has to make searchings for a fingerprint match process. However, TAD class exposes a method to upload fingerprints but it works only when device is configured to use the old BioBridge VX 9.0 algorithm. When device uses VX 10.0 algorithm, the machine freezes!!!. When asked to ZK Software forum, the answer got was: "It has to work with any biobridge version. Check your code!". Any help about this, would be appreciated.

Restarting / Shutting down the device.

TADResponse API

Every command executed via TAD class will return an object that is an instance of TADResponse class. This object contains all information about the device's response received. This way you can get full flexibility to manipulate the responses that you got from the device: you can transform it in XML, JSON or even you can get an array. Also you can set some criterias to make a filtering process on the response.

Getting and Setting responses

When you call any TAD method, all responses (including those empty ones) are returned as an TADResponse object, so you can invoke any of methods mentioned above:

$r= $tad->get_date();
// Get response in XML format.
$xml_date = $r->get_response();
// Or you can specify the format.
$json_date = $r->get_response(['format'=>'json']);
// Or you want to get just response's body (without XML header).
$raw_response = $r->get_response_body(); // This always will be in XML format!!!

Transform device's responses in XML, JSON or Array format.

As you seen above, you can get device's responses in different formats using get_response() method and specifying the format you want. However, you can use the following methods too:

// Get attendance logs for all users.
$att_logs = $tad->get_att_logs(); // $att_logs is an TADResponse object.
// Get response in XML format.
$xml_att_logs = $att_logs->to_xml();
// Get response in JSON format.
$json_att_logs = $att_logs->to_json();
// Get an array from response.
$array_att_logs = $att_logs->to_array().
// Lets get an XML response in one single step.
$xml = $tad->get_att_logs()->to_xml();

Counting how many items has the response

When you are interested just in how many items has the response, just count them:

$att_logs = $tad->get_att_logs();
// Get just the number of logs you retrived.
$logs_number = $att_logs->count();

Dealing with empty responses

Sometimes some queries to the device returns an empty answer. Because the original response from the device is in XML format, to know if you got any relevant data, you should have to parse the responses. That's not very handy:

$r = $tad->get_att_logs(['pin'=>123]); // This employee does not have any logs!!!
if ($r->is_empty_response()) {
echo 'The employee does not have logs recorded';
}
...

Filtering response according your needs!!!

As you saw above, all device's responses are handled by TADResponse class. You get the raw XML but you always get the whole set. What if you you'd like to do some kind of processing on reponses? Now, you can process the whole XML response by applying filters. This way, you can get just XML responses that really needs.

The original response is lost! because it is replaced with the filtered response.

If you do a filter_by using a non exists tag, you'll always get an empty response.

When you want to specify specific ranges you have to use an associative array with keys 'start' (indicates where range begins), and 'end' (where range ends).

greater than ranges are indicated by passing only 'start' key.

less than ranges are indicated by passing only 'end' key.

To perform searches (filtering) to match just partial strings, you have to use the key 'like' as you saw in the example above.

To perform a full match search (filtering) you have to pass the string directly, without use an array.

To filter by 1 exact value you have to pass just the value (not an array!). However, if by any reason you decide to use an array, both keys have to have the same value.

If you want to build a very specific filter, you have to use filter_xml() method. Using it, you are able to built a customized regex to define how the XML have to be processed.

Todo

TADPHP is not perfect!!!. As mentioned at the beggining, it's been developed after hours, and hours, and hours of googling and it's been tested using just Fingertec Q2i Time & attendance device (that it's I have in my work), so it's possible that you can find errors when you use it with others devices or even you can find better ways to do the things. For that reason, there are some things to do:

Make TAD-PHP works perfectly on devices with ZEM greater than 600 (with ZEM800 almost everything works as expected, but there are still some bugs).

Make set_user_template() method works with BioBridge VX 10.0 algorithm.

Find out how to customize the PIN code generation in the PHP_ZKLib zk_set_user_info() method.

Test TAD method get_option(). This method allows you getting detailed information about the device, but it's necessary to set its argument to a valid option name. However, these names are not available, and according to documentation ZK Software can give you all options names but you have to pay for them.

Enhance PHP_ZKLib to allows more sophisticated functions like uploading user's photo for example.

License

Copyright (c) 2014 Jorge Cobis (<jcobis@gmail.com>)

MIT License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
"Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE
LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION
OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION
WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.